With the ever increasing penetration of Internet and Telecommunications all over the world, there has been a proliferation of various communication tools and platforms. However, collaboration and communication between people is still happening in silos and it is hard to maintain context between various communications that might happen over different communication channels.
Collaboration platforms available today are mostly targeted in nature such as WORDPRESS for blogging, GOOGLE TALK or YAHOO MESSENGER for instant messaging chat, OUTLOOK/GMAIL/YAHOO MAIL for email, YAHOO ANSWERS for Question and Answers, DROPBOX or GOOGLE DRIVE for cloud storage and collaborative document editing, FACEBOOK/TWITTER for social communication, and so on.
The prevalence of the vast array of communication mechanisms may be explained by different needs for a same individual for different purposes (personal, official, document collaboration, secure communication, group communication, and so on), and variations in preferences between individuals. For example, some people prefer instant messaging over waiting for email. And, some others may voice/video chat over instant messaging and so on.
More and more industries are now relying on online communication tools for collaboration and service delivery. The various communication channels provide an option for individuals to choose the right channel suitable to their needs and preferences. And, typically, one individual engages with multiple forms of communication over a period of time due to their own changing needs and the preferences of other individuals they communicate with. The diverse nature of communications makes it difficult to maintain context across channels due to the discrete nature of the communication channels available today.
In certain industries, having a contextual conversation every time is important to the success or failure of systems. For example, let us consider a health care services delivery platform for directed to mental health, substance abuse, or disability services pertaining to the Healthcare industry. For online communication platforms to succeed in such a scenario requires, care givers and individuals being able to communicate with each other well over long periods of time. And, as with many systems, health care systems can be dynamic. Care givers can change and move to new jobs, and different care givers attend to different needs of a care receiving individual and so on. And, therefore, a care receiving individual may be interacting with many different care givers. In such a dynamic environment, it is impossible to maintain context of conversation with discrete communication and collaboration tools available today.